Our consciousness is the seed that
grows into the tree that is our being,
mind and body, and the entire universe.

But we are not that.
We are beyond beingness,
Beyond nothingness.
True Divinity,
Eternally.

Enjoy the play,
Good or bad there is no difference.
The only true sin –
Not remembering who you really are.
Only from that does trouble arise.

Amazing the wind…

Robust, energetic, mystical.

I can’t fathom being a squirrel, burrowed in a nest of old leaves and twigs, on top of the highest branches of the evergreen outside our house.

The tree, a mythical giant, hovers over us.

Centuries old…

Much older than the former resident of this tiny beach cottage, weathered and worn, built shortly before the second world war. Our own burrow here on the ground.

I gaze at its roots and then its upper body, swaying back and forth gracefully.

Gigantic and flexible….

Dancing with ease.

Born from an age once recorded only on paper, its distant relative, now tucked away in someone’s forgotten dusty old library.

One day it too will have its own journey, forge its own tale, its transformation, reincarnation, into fire, heat, energy. A domicile for moss, ants, spiders, and other species, feeding off it, using it for shelter.

It’s been battered by weather and storms much worse than this. But the wind has gathered up steam since morning, and everything has its limits.

The chime hanging in the yard is jingling and jangling, singing in spits and spurts, speaking to no one in particular.

Maybe the wind…

It soothes me, as I imagine it would anyone. Then a sudden gale… and a moment of caution and circumspection falls over me.

It seems evident, a divine right, a universality, written in our chromosomes and genes, that we will all witness a grey clad sky with waves of gusting air as part of our passing.

The foretelling of things to come.

Mysterious things…

Things that if we could only see and understand might unlock secrets even we don’t know we have.

Why do I dream of you this way?

Of separation and despair.

The longing for you…

The longing for you to long for me.

To continue on eternally.

Changelessly…

The pain that’s caused, real or imagined, now envelops me.

The weight of my sorrow.

Encumbering.

The darkness,
Emptied of love.

And on finally waking, like a man submerged in an ocean of fear, rising to the surface and gasping for air,

I am alone.

I wade to shore, fatigued.
The water still – waist high.
The taste of consolation,
Salty against my lips.

My body wet and heavy.
Its memory, like narrow rivers, dripping off me.

Evaporating.

Fading…

Now vague of detail.
Yet drenched with emotion.

Why do I dream of you this way?

The guilt of desire.

The grasping and clutching.

The endlessly yearning for you.

Neglectful of love.

Our love…

The disremembering…

How can I explain my love for you?

I appeal to myself, to history and science, the religious and the shaman.

Can it be measured? Weighed..
Divined by the cosmos, God.

Should I seek out the great poets and bards? All words mere shadows.

Mystical, numinous, eternal…

Should I think of it as an affliction, an ailment in need of treatment.

A psychosis.

Impossible to quantify.

How do I explain, my love…

Not this nor that.

Miraculous, transcendent, celestial..

The essence of all creation.

What’s real can never be explained.

It only is.

There’s a place where I keep my heart.
A sanctuary for my soul.
Bury me here when I part,
On top of the wooded knoll.

Sit with me by my side,
And reminisce of days gone past.
And if your grief won’t subside,
Remember nothing was built to last.

Bewitched and delighted,
Sleepy and entwined,
The magic spell of wine
Numbs the body, but swells the heart.

Drunk with dreams,
Our silent wishes may go unanswered.

Will i…
Will you…

The warm night against our skin,
And you…
Ever so quietly drift off alone,
And leave me here to muse.

The future will come on its own.
The bottle lying empty.
And i, still and half-awake,
Dare to fill myself with hope.

I have been here before,
At the edge of uncertainty.

I have been here before,
The warm night against my skin.

The mystery remains just that…

The forecast calls for more.
The beating of hearts will continue.
The drinking of wine, the dreaming of you…

For us, now and always …

I am floating in blue space,
Yellow fire overhead.

Inside, a red sea,
Racing to red rivers.

I am floating in blue space,
Browning vessel, violet green.

Inside ivory,
Interpenetrating.

I’m floating in blue space,
Yellow fire overhead.

Green mountain,
I call you sugar, snow and maple…

Dripping poetry and prose from frosted lips, sap and syrupy.

A painting signed by God…
Van Gogh or Monet, Cole or Homer.

Eastern red-cedar, hemlock and birch, tamarack, spruce, black willow and pine, reign silently over steep sprawling hills of moss covered rock and white powder.

The black ash lying half in the stream,

And we’re driving in a time machine.

1971…

Deep in the glen.

Chasing the gushing river for a stretch, until it vanishes beneath our feet, off into obscurity, quietly hiding, like a playful child, only to surprise, scurrying to greet us unfailingly and evermore.

Then east, then west again…

Now side by side.

Cascading endlessly…

Always the same, always changing.

Never vapid, forever unfolding, alluring.

Dressed sparsely by the flesh-worn and callused hands of liberty. Broad ax, forge iron, shears, snips and button hooks.

The palette of the American sculptor.

Ancient pilgrims and pioneers,
plebeians and peasants.

The spirit of liberation…
Passion, voyage,
Rebellious runaway.
The for-fathers of the for-fathers.

The first white men…
The first white women.

I drift further still, staring deep into the dark wood, venerable rock, the mystic peaks covered in fresh powder.

Eons hence…

Back to the first red men…
The first red women.

I can see the camp, scattered tee-pees, smoke rising.

The Algonquian women slouched and bent, wading knee high, gathering water for the tribe.

The white man still an ocean away.

The Abnaki men, clandestine and silent, spot a deer along the precipice, Patiently, with arrow and bow, wait beyond the brush.

Their painted faces, long dark hair, and beaver pelts tell fabled stories of rich beginnings. The providing earth.

And when the fatal strike for sustenance is complete, it’s greeted with a triumphant scream of joyous ecstasy that echoes throughout these hills. A primitive cry to ancient gods and goddesses; the sun, the moon, and the countless stars that fall away to morning.

A primordial celebration of vitality.
The indigenous, monolithic, human spirit.

I can not look at the sea anymore and not think of you and the mountains.

When I die I hope you find this –

Some things are hard to say face to face.

Some things are hard to say at all,

Even to oneself.

It makes it real.

It makes it too real.

I pretend I’m someone else.

Everything is fine.

I pretend.

The way it should be.

Falling in love in the spring.

Swimming in the summers ocean.

Watching the leaves fall.

Death in winter.

I’ve been mostly blind and deaf.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve really understood anything completely.
Maybe it’s because there is just so much.

Discovery leads to mystery,
And mystery to discovery.
There’s really no where to go.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.
The answer is . . .
There is no answer.

We move forward,
Standing still.

Eating cold potato leek and Italian wedding.
We attacked it and the soup was gone.
Just like the kidney,
She was removed.
Her eyes were filled with worry.
So were his.
It’s what happens when the cold days of fall begin to usher in winter.
A chill in your bones,
And the air.
When you no longer recognize your own face.
Your diamond jubilee.
The golden wedding.
We waited,
On a message from God.
As I kissed you goodbye,
Twice.

Alone together . . .

Deep within the silence.
Where God lives.
Where I know, without question, is true quietness and eternal peace.

The source . . .

I look out of my window and into the darkness of the night, beyond the crescent moon and into the splendor of the stars, billions of years into the past.

Before time . . .

How fantastical, the sense of awe and beauty.

I think of you and how our love originated there.

Just floating in nothingness but a thought that explodes into a cosmic wonder of the ages…

And here we are dancing in it’s beautiful mess. Laughing . . . crying . . .

Intertwining, two bulbs of unfathomable energy, floating, swimming, entangling . . .

Coalescing

In joyous celebration!

Hoping, promising, wishing, dreaming, lusting, in the middle of infinity . . .

And not only for an hour . . .

But since the dawn of time . . .

Stay with me.

I want to kiss everything,
With full lips,
Hunt for poems,
Underneath the lamp of night.
Seduce mystery,
And become her secret lover.

I want to comfort misery.
Quietly approach her,
Late in the evening,
asleep In bed.
Kiss her gently on her warm cheek,
And tell her I love her.

She dreams like we all do.

I want to dance with misfortune, under a crystal chandelier.
In a ballroom filled with lavish gowns and champagne.
She blushes when I whisper in her ear.
And all the men with their top hats and fancy pocket watches grovel for her hand.

She’ll never be lonely again.

We are beautiful.
Even when we are ugly,
We are beautiful.

The dog is itching.
I know that itch.
There’s very little relief.

Sometimes it’s the scratching
That makes us ugly.

Sometimes the only thing
We can do is be ugly.

We are Ugly.
Even when we are beautiful,
We are ugly.

I want to come back as heat lightening, rolling over a calm sea, deep in July.

A small boy stands hypnotized,
watching with wide eyes, back on the shore.

His father kneels beside him for reassurance, as I cascade across the sky and set the night ablaze.

Unbridled energy he tells him…

Or maybe a soft December snow, like cotton, falling gently from the sky, in a quiet meadow in the woods of Maine.
A deer is sipping from the brook, as I drop peacefully into the water and disappear down stream.

No human eyes for miles …

Or even better – a small fire, lit on top of an open hill, under a clear night sky, where lovers lean into each other and kiss for the very first time. I crackle the burning wood and shoot sparks into the air.

“Like stars,” he whispers in her ear…

Or maybe a single leaf, dancing in the wind on a brisk fall day. The young girl, walking home from school, watches and smiles and thinks…

We are never really alone.

Our inevitable fate
Looms silently over dark horizons,
Plodding and falling in perpetual motion, every minute and hour,
Like a waterfall into a city of ghosts.

And streams of energy carry us to rivers and oceans and far off lands of unknown origin,
like lost explorers in dream-like states.
And there we coalesce and wait and formulate into new and continuous and infinite possibilities.

Stories waiting to be born.
We set the stage and the curtain is drawn,
as we fall silently asleep into a vague darkness
and wait for our future to unfold again.

I love you so much, he says.
I can’t wait to be with you, sleep next to you, kiss your mouth gentle and hard ….

I can’t wait, she says,
I need more of that in my life.

Me too, he replies, with a deep sorrow in his eyes.

He pauses and stares out the window in a haze, the passing terrain speeding by.

We need it so we can go on living,
so we can find the strength to walk through the storm filled valleys,
and over steep mountains of dirt and rock;
our feet sore and bleeding from the promises we must keep,
and the miles of indecision we imagine in the distance.

Adrift on a sea of nothingness,
Before all time and history,
I set sail.
For days, weeks, months, millenniums…
No, before all that and longer.
Before I even knew or could know.

Silence, and more silence, and then silence again.
Darkness, and more darkness, and then darkness again.
And in a split second,
An explosion…
It swept me on it’s wave.
Like I was shot out of a canon.
Nuclear, atomic, to the infinite power.
First light.
And color…
Heat.
The birth of everything…
The Desert to Tokyo in a split second.
Mass and mass and mass and matter!
I was no longer alone.
And no longer lonely.
But I was no longer immortal.
Now one day this would all be over.
I would die and so would you,
And so would everything.
I wailed and wailed as I made shore and fell into your arms.

The good news,
All empires eventually fall.
And this one – just a flea on the back of history.
A short poem about consumption.
A half-baked idea by a drunk in a dingy bar.

America the beautiful dressed like a tramp, walking rain soaked streets on a cold winters evening. The smell of fresh garbage in the air.

And we try to shield the children’s faces as she slowly walks past us; her torn fish-net stockings, her dark mascara running down her pimpled face, her dirty bra worn as a shirt, her broken high-heel that gives her a silly limp, the smell of her whiskey breath.

Some men and woman don’t feel the slightest sympathy. “She brought this on herself,” they say.

“Shouldn’t we help,” cry the bleeding hearts, who repeatedly molested her as a young child, who turned her out on the streets with crocodile tears.

And all the priests and politicians take turns in a sleazy motel or in the backseat of a car parked in the woods by the side of the road.

America, that spoiled rotten kid, who got everything he wanted; the expensive sneakers, the big screen tv’s, the trips to Europe, all the latest brands.

He’s failing out of school…

Throwing tantrums over the color of his new car, a gift for his birthday.

He’ll crash it racing up broadway, texting his friends, spitting on people who don’t look like him. It doesn’t matter…

The police come with cotton-candy and chauffeur him off to a holding room until high priced lawyers start throwing presidents around like leaves on a windy November day.

America, the dirty water of flint has rotted your brain, your soldiers are dying at home, you’ve maxed-out your credit cards, you’ve degraded yourself ….and now you’re embarrassed?!?!

America, a constant debate about nothing,
Arguing over breadcrumbs, while the thieves run off with your future, taking your children and laughing in your face.

America, where is George Washington?

He’s dead and buried.

Just a ghost in a history book that’s burning in a barn-fire in a dark city street in the middle of the heartland, coast to coast, east and west, north and south.

Some spirits will travel together for an eternity, only parting for a brief time, then reuniting again.
From a distance I can see what a beautiful dance it is. A choreography of the heart. And their bodies separate, one on each side of the same stage, waiting to be lifted into the air, to astound us, to defy gravity, to remind us that nothing can stop true love.